One More Thing

The Christchurch terrorist was probably frightened off when he thought that the heroic guy who chased after him was armed, as noted here:

[Aziz] said the gunman ran back to his car to get another gun, so he threw a credit card machine at him.
He said he could hear his two youngest sons, 11 and five, urging him to come back inside.
The gunman returned firing but Mr Aziz said he ran past parked cars which prevented him from being shot. Mr Aziz spotted a gun the attacker had dropped and picked it up. He pointed it and squeezed the trigger but it was empty. He said the gunman ran back to the car for a second time to grab another weapon.
‘He gets into his car and I just got the gun and threw it on his window like an arrow and blasted his window,’ he said. ‘The windshield shattered, that’s why he got scared.’
He said the gunman was cursing at him, yelling that he was going to kill them all.
But he drove away and Mr Aziz said he chased the car down the street to a red light before it made a U-turn and sped away.

Couple-three points to be made here.  Firstly, all praise and kudos to Our Hero — I mean, chasing down a gunman with a card-reader?  Dude!  And considering that Aziz came from Afghanistan, this was probably a walk in the park by comparison to what he’s seen.  (“Only one  gunman?  Phooey.  Try ten  gunmen — now that’s  scary.”)

Secondly, note that even though Aziz was unarmed, the asshole thought  he had a gun and was shooting at him — hence the flight, and eventual capture.  I leave it to the imagination as to what might have happened had a few congregants been armed, but we all know that story.  Too bad it’s illegal to defend yourself with a gun in KiwiLand — because, of course, nothing bad has ever happened in New Zealand to justify that.  Until something bad did  happen.  And this was really  bad.

Finally, if any of those Muslim worshipers in Christchurch have ever supported, even philosophically, the acts of Muslim terrorism (and I’ll bet there are a few), just remember how it felt when it was happening to you.  I know this prick was a nutcase — but so are the extremist Muslims who do the same, or worse, to non-Muslims.

Jihad  cuts both ways, doesn’t it?

Not Quite, Amir

In the wake of the mass killings in New Zealand, boxer Amir Khan made this statement:

“Islamophobia kills and has no place in the world.”

Without in any way downplaying the tragedy in Christchurch or diminishing the horror that this asshole inflicted on his victims, let’s at least acknowledge that in the ledger of religion-inspired killings over the past half-century, Islam (or Islamophilia) has caused untold more deaths than Islamophobia (cf. around 3,000  on 9/11, to mention but a single incident).

Once again, I’m not trying to excuse the Australian terrorist’s wickedness — I think he should be boiled alive in oil — but let’s keep the proper perspective on this incident.

And one last thing:  Islamophobia is not endemic, but a reaction  against Islam’s perceived excesses (ISIS, 9/11, 10/10, Manchester bombing, etc.)

Islam’s enmity towards non-Muslims, however, is very much an integral part of their faith.  That  is irrefutable.

Private vs. Public

Much has been made about the Socialist Party demanding to be able to scrutinize President Trump’s tax returns over the past fifty years or whatever, and how Senior Socialist Pelosi isn’t able to rein in the demands of the AOC Wing of the Party.  Whatever.

My take is simple:  a private citizen’s tax information is an intensely confidential business — between the individual (or his agent) and the IRS, and no other.

Once an individual starts working in government, i.e. in public service, then his tax returns should be published in the Congressional Record each year, for two reasons:

  1. a position in public service should require that the public be able to scrutinize how it is possible for, say, ex-Senator Harry Reid (or current Speaker Pelosi, for that matter) to become a multi-millionaire while earning only a Congressional salary, and
  2. the knowledge that their financial dealings while in public service are being made public would make all gummint workers and elected officials more circumspect in their behavior, and rein in their corruption tendencies.

In other words, before  someone starts working for the Gummint / is elected to office, those tax records are nunya.  Once you become  a public servant — and only then — those tax records should be subject to public scrutiny.

So if Trump tells Congress to FOAD when they demand to see his pre-presidential tax returns, I’ll support him to the hilt.  But should Red Nancy refuse to let us see her tax returns from all the years she’s been in Congress, she should be impeached herself.

Quote Of The Day

“We no longer glorify heroic deeds, we glorify heroic suffering.” — Greg Cochran

Yup.  To be a member of a “victimized” class (women, Blacks, LGBTOSHTFU, etc.) is the sine qua non of modern heroism.  But the holder of a Medal of Honor or Victoria Cross?  War criminal.

All of which reminds me:  it’s Range Day at this address.

Working Towards A Conservative Democracy

We are constantly being reminded that the United States is a representative republic (which it is) as well as being a liberal democracy (which is also true).  For the longest time, I’ve had the gnawing suspicion that the two concepts may be antithetical, nay even contradictory, and recent events have proven me correct.

The standard-bearers of the modern liberal democracy have tended towards the “liberal” part of the description, and their modernism has turned liberalism away from its classical roots (the Enlightenment) towards a more baleful and statist, ergo illiberal  ethos.  It is small wonder, therefore, that this modern liberalism is attacking both the “representative” and even “republic” towards a full democracy, into a government created by a national popular vote instead of a democracy limited by proportional representation.  (The sudden popularity of socialism — one of the more repressive governmental systems, is simply indicative of this intent, and the “democratic” prefix attached thereto is, like most of socialism, a figleaf to mask its true purpose.)

It seems clear that if we are to reverse this trend, we need to try to implement an antithetical alternative to the liberal democracy — that antithesis being a conservative democracy, as explained here by Yoram Hazony. I’m pretty sure that few if any conservative small-r republicans will take issue with this principle, for example:

Liberals regard the laws of a nation as emerging from the tension between positive law and the pronouncements of universal reason, as expressed by the courts. Conservatives reject the supposed universal reason of judges, which often amounts to little more than acceding to passing fashion. But conservatives also oppose an excessive regard for isolated written documents, which leads, for example, to the liberal mythology of America as a “creedal nation” (or a “propositional nation”), defined solely by certain abstractions found in the American Declaration of Independence or the Gettysburg Address. Important though these documents are, they cannot substitute for the Anglo-American political tradition as a whole—with its roots in Scripture and the English common law—which alone offers a complete picture of the English and American legal inheritance.

Yes.  The famous expression on the Statue of Liberty “Give me your tired, your huddled masses…” etc. is a lovely sentiment, but it is not policy  which allows untrammeled immigration, nor does it confer a “right to immigrate to the United States” upon the rest of the world’s populace.

Read the whole thing.  It’s really long, but it has to be — overturning a liberal democracy and reverting to a conservative one does not lend itself to bumper-sticker aphorisms so beloved by the Left.

And overturn it we must, in order to return to the proud Anglo-Saxon heritage that is the foundation of our Western civilization.


Afterthought:  note the emphasis placed on religion — most specifically, Christian religion — by Hazony.  I should point out that I, an atheist, have absolutely no issue with it.  I am a conservative first, an atheist second, and I treasure the Christian values of our heritage and their foundation of our culture.  That said, the values I treasure are also the traditional  aspects of Christianity and not the modern-day travesty they have become.  My conservatism is all-embracing.

Demonization

So let me make sure I’ve got this absolutely clear:  if the Gummint passes a patently un-Constitutional law and someone refuses to comply with it, that person would be a “homegrown terrorist”?

Got it.  I should also point out that it was Lenin who first equated refuseniks  with being terrorists.

Here’s a tip for this asshole:  you keep making shitty laws and stockpiling bodybags, and we’ll keep buying ammo.  We’ll see who runs out first.